LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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Hollinger 

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Mill Run F3-1955 



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Copy 1 



LETTER 



GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



ON OCCASION OF HIS LATE PROCLAMATION, 



Of August 20. IStil. 



BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED BY A. K. LOKING, 

319 ^Vasuimgton Street. 

1 8 G 1 . 



LETTER 



GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



ON OCCASION OF HIS LATE PROCLAMATION, 



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Of August 20, 18G1. 



BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED BY A. K. LORING, 

319 Wasuinqton Street. 

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LETTER 



Sir: 

All good citizens of Massachusetts must feel them- 
selves bound, as well hy personal respect as by that 
due to your office, to give ready heed to the exhor- 
tations addressed to them in your late Proclamation. 
The occasion is indeed pressing, and the ancient 
virtue of the Commonwealth neither dead nor asleep. 
If, nevertheless, the response shall seem to your justly 
excited feelings, — if not tardy and hesitating, at 
least less prompt and full, and their devotion to the 
country's cause less entire and unhesitating, than an 
adequate sense of what is involved in this struggle 
should at once enforce, — be assured, sir, that the 
surprise and the disappointment are shared by those 
whom you addressed. 

Massachusetts, following the example set by her 
Chief Magistrate, has done and, doubtless, is doing 
much. Many motives call upon us to act, — and, 



first of all, a new and potent enthusiasm has been 
awakened, and many persons who were neither 
brutish nor revolutionary, but good neighbors and 
respecters of the laws, have learned for the first time 
what the word patriotism means, and have discovered 
with some astonishment that they also have a country. 
They would gladly give their feelings expression, but, 
coming to act, their enthusiasm receives a chill. The 
zeal is not less, but it is at a loss for direction, and 
paralyzed by doubt. What sacrifice could be too 
great when, were failure conceivable, nothing less 
than the national existence is at stake ? It is not 
merely tranquillity and prosperity that are endan- 
gered, — for if the slave power is to rule, to what end 
have we existed here these two hundred years ? The 
magnitude of the issue may not be clearly seen, but 
it is deeply felt ; and, slowly or swiftly, would show 
itself in corresponding action. 

Whence, then, this sluggishness, — these mixed 
motives, — these unhandsome considerations? It is 
not the hanging back of weak nerves or of a callous 
selfishness, scared at the proportions of the contest 
or the sacrifices demanded. Those whom this em- 
barrassment afflicts are the best citizens, the whole- 
souled, the unwavering. They are cordially ready 
to do and to suffer for the right; but, when they 
come to act, they find themselves hesitating, and as 
it were, spell-bound by apprehension and distrust. 



It is not that there is any real suspicion of evil in- 
tentions or of the lack of good intentions on the part 
of those at the head of affairs. But good intentions 
are. cheap. Who cares how good a man's intentions 
are, if he be unenlightened, weakly good-natured, 
Jesuitical, using questionable means for the sake of 
the end ? His good intentions may as likely lead to 
evil, as bad intentions. It is not any definite suspic- 
ion, but an uneasy misgiving, that the national admin- 
istration is not even yet alive to the true nature and 
extent of the work before them. It is in vain that 
the people act, if they and their agents are not at one, 
at least as to principles. It is not mere disgust, pro- 
voked by all manner of scandals in every department 
of administration, by inefficiency and by misefficiency 
of performance. It was to be expected, that on sud- 
den occasion, the machinery would be found rusty 
and out of repair. That the offices should be filled 
with creatures whose only function is to grasp and 
devour, — with enemies of the country, — with gal- 
lows-birds, even, — that was to be expected as the 
natural consequence of long prosperity. The machine 
was little needed, and the use of it accordingly slight 
and careless, affording no test of its condition. Its 
rickety plight, if known or suspected, was not without 
its consolations. We had learned to ignore it or to 
tolerate it, for the sake of the freedom that rendered 
it possible. But, if the disease, not stopping at the 



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surflice, is to strike in and become the system, — if 
clamorous partisanship is to be the title to office, and 
party tactics the rule of government, and this as of 
right and not by accidental abuse, — dissolution is 
clearly at hand. Jobbery, on whatever scale or upon 
however magnanimous principles, is jobbery still; 
and though a great and thriving country can endure' 
a great deal of jobbing, yet a government all job, is 
possible only when the need of government has ceased 
altogether, — a consummation, unhappily, not yet 
attained, and indeed, as this occasion abundantly 
shows, still far off. 

Of course, no considerate person will incline to 
censoriousness at this moment, but rather to abate 
and postpone much of just demands. It is not a favor- 
able time to careen the ship of state. If the leaks 
be not too threatening, and the accumulation of sea- 
weed and barnacles do not stop her way altogether, 
— if she will still mind the helm, and above all if the 
helmsman do not in the stress of the moment forget 
to look at his compass, — the ship's company may 
well be content to receive orders without criticism. 
Just now, the need doubtless sharpens our sense of 
deficiencies. Let us not obstruct by way of helping. 
Let us not visit upon these men the fault of their 
predecessors, or of their position, if only they 
make the best of their position. Faults of detail, 
blunders in execution, we shall mend of, if the aim 



be thoroughly and heartily right. We will not de- 
mand of our functionaries an impossible virtue, skill, 
or accomplishment, — much less than that. But this 
at least they owe us, that what they attempt shall be 
in the direction of what the nation demands, and not in 
its aim or its means to go to vitiate and obstruct 
what it has at heart. This, at least, can be re- 
quired of every organized body, political or other, 
that it shall stand uj) for itself. It is a test equally 
applicable whatever be our opinion of its merits. 
Every sound organism, whether beneficent or malig- 
nant, is at least coherent, — wanting that one sees 
not what can save it. 

But the history of the present national administra- 
tion shows not so much a want of skill or want of 
success, as want of purpose. Mixed motives, defer- 
ence to this or that interest or clique, subtle con- 
siderations of remote effects, — whatever our opinions 
may be, it is clear no success can be had in this way. 
It is beyond human wisdom to compute by the count- 
ing of votes or the consultations of wire-pullers, even 
the nearest effects of any course of action. The 
number of possible combinations, the sidewinds of 
new influences, of after events, at once outrun the 
wariest and most practiced judgment. 

Do your duty, whatever come of it ; — one hesi- 
tates to reiterate so trite a maxim, — yet it is the 
sum of political wisdom as of all other wisdom, and not 



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alone a rule of morals, but the degree that it re- 
ceives application in a state, as shown in the per- 
tinacity with which rulers and people stand up for 
their organic, distinctive principle, — is the measure of 
its political efficiency. It may be rude, unreasoning, 
barbarous; — if may be accompanied by all manner 
of surface abuses, of chicanery and injustice, but it 
shows the warrant of a deep necessity in a steady 
drift in one direction, that amid all superficial contra- 
dictions gives simplicity and character to its policy. 

With us it seems sometimes as if the virtues of our 
politicians were as alarming as their vices. When 
justice comes to mean — not all the plunder for our 
side, but a fair share for the other side 5 — wdien right 
is held to be a tender and chivalrous consideration of 
opposing wrong ; — one would rather see somewhat 
less of this civility, and try what savage instinct might 
effect. Such tolerance is incredible, not compatible 
with human proportions. Let us rather have a little 
intolerance — or rather, a perception that principles 
are absolute, and not a matter for toleration at all. 

What is the " organic principle " of the Republican 
party ? What is it amid the heterogenous elements 
wherefrom it was built, that each member of it 
acknowledged as his ? Surely, every candid person, 
whether he voted with that party or not, will agree 
that its distinctive tenet, and accordingly the policy 
from which it could in no event depart, was opposi- 



tion to the extension of Slavery •within the national 
territory. Its course, if not indeed like a Roman 
road straight over hill and dale to that mark, should 
at least be expected to keep the main direction, with 
only such deviations, if any, as should be plainly 
necessary to avoid worse. But what shall we say, 
when the chosen agents of that party propose to do 
what no enemy of it ever threatened, viz : — to make 
the government itself a slaveholder ? Mr. Secretary 
Cameron's late manifesto already goes to that length 
and further. For by it the United States would not 
only hold slaves, but adjudge them to itself, and that 
not only without judge or jury, but by a most sum- 
mary process, wherein the ancient maxim of the com- 
mon law — (is it not the most ancient and the most 
fundamental ?) — that the law always favors liberty 
— would be reversed, and every person (of a certain 
complexion) held to be a slave until the contrary is 
proved. 

These dark complexioned stragglers are not 
prisoners-of-war, for the government makes none. 
Whether or not they are "fugitives from service," 
must remain utterly unknown to it or its military 
officials, until the fact be duly authenticated to them, 
as it never can be by them. And if they were, that 
would confer no right upon the United States to hold 
them. "Local masters," whether loyal or disloyal, 
have no common-law ri;]rhts over these fuoritives — 



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much less any such equitable clanns as to have effect 
given them by the mere motion and certain knowl- 
edge residing in the breasts of the various command- 
ers of United States troops. These mild phrases of 
" receiving " and " employing " such presumed fugi- 
tives, mean, then, in fact, a reenslaving them by the 
United States. A function of the government hitherto 
unsuspected ! Truly, it was a trivial matter in re- 
spect of which the country was so convulsed, — the 
menaced introduction of slavery into the remote 
deserts of the West, in comparison with this extension 
of it into the bosom of the government itself! Our 
War Secretary would thus seem to promise well as a 
minister of peace; at least, if offering the enemy 
a good deal more than they ever asked would bring 
that about. If the dreadful " abolition " administra- 
tion is thus to legitimate and itself practice what its 
extremest opponents only claimed toleration for, — it 
does not appear what remains to fight about, at any 
rate from the side of the slaveholders. 

But, however it might content them, such a peace 
as this would have few attractions for Massachusetts. 
Peace is highly valued by us, because it does not 
mean "the absence of war, but is a comprehensive ex- 
pression for all the blessings that follow an advancing 
civilization. Peace to us means concord, the brother- 
hood of mankind, — not hcense to flog our nigger and 
parade our bowie-knife with impunity. Peace plus 
slavery would be to us rather an empty affair. 



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It is for this, sir, if we hesitate and hang back. It 
is for this that the performance of Massachusetts, 
whatever it be, is not yet adequate to her means and 
her good-will. We value peace so highly that we 
are willing to pay a high price for it — even war. 
It is because the people know well what war involves, 
that they will be found punctually and religiously 
ready to meet it on due occasion. 

Only let it be assured that what we are to buy 
with these grievous devastations, with the sacred 
tears of wives and mothers, is to be peace indeed, and 
not a mockery, — a peace that means freedom and 
not a peace that means slavery. It is time that the 
true issues of this contest were clearly put. Let the 
cant about the " Union " cease. If the Union means 
anything, it means consent in principles, it means a 
common standard of right and of civilization — not a 
common custom-house and post-office, nor a league of 
fiUibusters to keep the rest of the world away from 
their plunder. If that be the image of the country, 
it is the vainest folly to exhort men to patriotism, to 
adventure life and fortune in its cause ; for their only 
concern with it can be but to avoid danger to life 
and property. They may take a little risk or loss to 
avoid a greater; but for enthusiasm, as well get 
enthusiastic over an insurance-policy. 

What, then, is the shield that the Massachusetts 
mother is to put into the hand of her son, when with 



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bitter anguish she yields him to the call of his 
country — " with it my son or upon it ? " What is it, 
that he should die rather than surrender ? Is it some 
new compromise ? Is it the Fugitive Slave Law in a 
new and enlarged draft? Is it the divine right of 
barbarism and ojDpression ? A great deal of fog hangs 
over the national councils, and what is seen from time 
to time is sometimes alarmingly ambiguous. How, 
then, can it look for a prompt and hearty support ? 
In the smoke and din of battle much must remain 
obscured, much must be taken for granted, — but 
when the face of the leader is discerned, it should 
discover and inspire an unwavering purpose, and a 
trust placed beyond the reach of failure. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 026 241 5 



L 



LIBRARY OF CONC 



012 026 24 



Hollinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




012 026 241 5 



HoUinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3.1955 



